The “masterpiece” (Michael Herr) of the New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road, No Country for Old Men, The Passenger, and Stella Maris

“The book that seems the most prescient about the United States of America in 2026.”—Lauren Groff for Time, “25 Books That Capture This American Moment”

“Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner. I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable.”—Harold Bloom, from his Introduction

“McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly—envied.”—Ralph Ellison

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Widely considered one of the finest novels by a living writer, Blood Meridian is an epic tale of the violence and corruption that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the “Wild West.” Its wounded hero, the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean, must confront the extraordinary brutality of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians. Seeming to preside over this nightmarish world is the diabolical Judge Holden, one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction.

Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian represents a genius vision of the historical West, one whose stature has only grown in the years since its publication. "McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly—envied."
—Ralph Ellison

"McCarthy is a born narrator, and his writing has, line by line, the stab of actuality. He is here to stay."
—Robert Penn Warren